November 1, 1999
CONTENTS:
- Security of art works
- Stealing From the 'Cities of the Dead'; New Orleans Antiques Dealers Suspected in Cemetery Thefts
- Re: steps for public services staff to take if they observe a theft in process (Steve Keller)
- Museum permits Greeks to inspect Elgin Marbles
- Exhibit Was Heavily Financed by Those With Much to Gain
- Florentine treasure found in market is sold abroad
(Museum-L)
From: Cinnamon Catlin legutkoc@wishard.edu
Subject: Security of art works
I am interested in devices/gadgets that secure paintings to the wall. I manage a corporate collection of mostly oils that have a low level of security, i.e., paintings scattered throughout the institution with various levels of access. I am familiar with the locking device advertised with University Products. I would be interested in commentary on such devices and leads about additional methods of security.
Thank you,
Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko
Fine Art Coordinator/Museum Coordinator
Wishard Health Services/Wishard Nursing Museum
Stealing From the 'Cities of the Dead'
New Orleans Antiques Dealers Suspected in Cemetery Thefts
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 1999; Page A01
NEW ORLEANS-On a splendidly warm winter day in 1998, while driving to his brother's house, Ted Brennan decided to detour through Lake Lawn Metairie Cemetery here. A wealthy restaurateur, healthy and happy, Brennan felt an acute appreciation for life that sunny afternoon, and he thought of his parents, long deceased. Turning into the cemetery, he drove to his family's granite tomb, an above-ground vault in which he too eventually will be interred.
Right away he saw that the tall marble statue outside the tomb was missing. "I felt like throwing up," he said. "When you see something like that gone, you're hoping against hope that maybe the cemetery is doing maintenance on it, cleaning it or something. But deep down, you know it's been stolen." Thieves indeed had taken it, which appalled Brennan. And what he and other New Orleanians have learned in the months since is even more distressing. In a city given to memorializing its departed souls with a flourish--where for two centuries the dead usually have been laid to rest above ground, often in mausoleums of such elaborate design that many old cemeteries here are considered architectural treasures--police uncovered an alleged theft ring. They said 250 stolen funerary ornaments worth nearly $1 million, including Brennan's statue, have turned up in the hands of some of the French Quarter's toniest antiques dealers and their clients. The allegation that respected purveyors of fine culture were dispatching street thieves to heist urns, statues, benches and other valuable artifacts from New Orleans's revered "cities of the dead" has scandalized local high society and historic preservation circles. Police said they suspect about a half-dozen French Quarter antiques dealers knowingly purchased stolen funerary ornaments and sold them to customers who, in some cases, were aware of the thefts. So far, two prominent dealers and a collector have been charged with felony possession of stolen goods. Outside the Brennan tomb, a nearly life-size sculpture of Mother Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized, had stood for decades, commissioned in Italy by Brennan's mother after his father's death in 1955. Ted Brennan was just 7 then. His mother explained to him that his father's favorite charity had been the Mother Cabrini Nursery, near his popular restaurant in the French Quarter. Now Brennan, 51, runs the restaurant. Like the tomb, he said, it gives him a sense of family permanence.
The statue offered the same comfort.
Brennan said his late mother paid $5,000 for the Mother Cabrini sculpture in 1955, but having an identical one crafted in Italy today would cost $45,000. "It's not the money," he said. "I mean, these tombs are almost like extensions of our homes. And when I found out antique dealers were involved, it was really upsetting. You feel like nothing is sacred when something like that happens." Along Royal Street, the French Quarter's antiques row, and in the elegant, Old World parlors of the city's preservation groups, the same anger is palpable. "Shock, disappointment, disgust," said Louise Fergusson, director of Save Our Cemeteries. "New Orleans is a small community, in a way. A lot of people know some of the people who have been accused of this, and it's very disturbing." To understand their sense of violation and betrayal, consider New Orleans's historically intimate relationship with its deceased. Because this part of Louisiana is below sea level and the water table is high, it always has been more efficient to inter the dead above ground, leaving them closer physically, and thus spiritually, to the living. More than 40 cemeteries here date to the 19th century and before, and they resemble scaled-down metropolises--miniature cities of granite and marble reflecting ancient, medieval and Renaissance architectural styles. "New Orleans' cemeteries are like New Orleans: they swing between destitution and opulence but always with style," wrote poet Andrei Codrescu in his foreword to "Elysium," a book of evocative New Orleans cemetery photographs. While many of the dead are entombed in plain mausoleums or grand ones in decay, thousands of the more fortunate are interred in Byzantine temples and ornate sarcophagi, in pyramids guarded by sphinxes, in Gothic cathedrals and Italian villas, and beneath Greek and Roman columns. "The keepers of the graves are mostly old women these days, who remember their mamere and papere and gran'mere and gran'pere," wrote Codrescu. "Their own resting places wait for them in the family crypts. . . . Great care is taken in planning which berth to lie on. Ending up next to a disliked relative can sour eternity. The grave keepers listen to the bones, remember, plot, pray, and scrub." One of the accused antiques dealers, Peter Patout, 43, whose Bourbon Street home has been featured in House Beautiful, Town & Country and similar magazines, belongs to a wealthy sugar-growing family whose forebears arrived here in the 1820s. After the alleged conspiracy became public, he declared his innocence at a news conference in front of an ancestor's tomb in the 145-year-old St. Louis Cemetery No. 3. "I am astonished and outraged at the easy assumptions being made regarding my integrity," he told reporters. He is charged with six counts of possessing stolen goods worth more than $500, each count punishable by up to 10 years in prison upon conviction. "He's a respected, legitimate dealer," Patout's attorney, Arthur Lemann, said last week after a court hearing. "He did acquire some items, but didn't think they were stolen. He buys and sells antiques. This stuff doesn't come wrapped in cellophane with a manufacturer's seal." A lawyer for antiques dealer Aaron Jarabica, 41, said his client, charged with one count, also is innocent, having acquired a stolen item in good faith. Roy Boucvalt, 55, a New Orleans physician, will offer the same defense at his trial, his attorney said. Boucvalt, a connoisseur of fine antiques, owns the historic Boucvalt House on St. Louis Street, a circa-1840 Greek Revival townhouse, delicately restored, that often hosts soirees of the Junior League and other New Orleans society clubs. He is accused of two counts of possessing stolen property worth more than $500. And like the others, he also is charged with conspiracy to commit theft. One Friday in February 1998, a worker at a cemetery where several thefts had occurred grew suspicious when he noticed a white van cruising among the mausoleums. He jotted down the license plate number and gave it to police. Because the worker hadn't witnessed a crime, detectives decided not to immediately question the van's owner, but to await his return to the cemetery. They hoped to catch him in the act of stealing. And on April 4 that year, they did. Detective Frederick Morton said the thief identified two accomplices, and all of them agreed to cooperate with investigators. The story they told, when it eventually became public, left the genteel devotees of New Orleans culture aghast. According to Morton, the thieves said they had started out by heisting small urns from cemeteries and peddling them in antiques shops for drug money. Eventually, some dealers urged them to bring in larger, more valuable items, the thieves said, and even directed them to certain cemeteries and taught them what to look for. In time, Morton said, detectives retrieved 250 urns, statues and benches from about 35 antiques dealers and the parlors and courtyards of several well-heeled customers. "We call our cemeteries 'cities of the dead' for a reason," said Patricia Brady, an official of the Historic New Orleans Collection, a preservation group. "These are communities of our ancestors, and we really like to go there and be with them. So these people who steal things, they're not stealing from the dead. They're stealing from us. We need these things. The city needs these things." Though the replacement costs for many of the larger objects would run in the high five figures, Morton said, the antiques dealers paid relatively paltry sums for them, then sold them, or offered them for sale, at $1,000 to $6,000 apiece. Of the 35 or so dealers, police suspect about a half-dozen took part in the alleged conspiracy. Morton said authorities decided last month that they had enough evidence to prosecute Patout, Jarabica and Boucvalt. After being formally charged, they were released on personal recognizance pending their trials. The 250 recovered artifacts--including the Brennan family's Mother Cabrini statue, with one of its hands broken off and missing--are being held in an evidence warehouse. The thieves have identified all of the items as stolen and were able to remember the locations of most of the tombs from which ornaments were taken, Morton said. But they could not recall where some of the artifacts rightfully belong in the vast "cities of the dead," and no family members have reported them missing. "The sad thing is, they may never be claimed," Brennan said. "Some of these families have died off."
c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
From: IntlArtCop@aol.com
Subject: Re: steps for public services staff to take if they observe a theft in process
In a message dated 10/22/99 5:10:24 PM, Rachel Howarth rjh@mail.utexas.edu writes:
what are the *specific* steps for public services staff to take if they observe a theft in process:
I have always suggested to clients that they take a non-accusative approach at first, especially if there is some remote possibility that they didn't see what they thought they saw. If you accuse someone of something, you better be able to back it up and since the theft might be a serious crime, be ready to defend yourself if the thief bolts or fights. Public service personnel should be trained like retail clerks. The exact wording of what they say will depend upon exactly what they saw. In a retail store, it costs more to prosecute a retail theft than to just prevent it and make a recovery. Stopping the incident in its tracks should be the first thought in most cases since it prevents a loss. A retail clerk who sees a theft of a book might say to the thief, "May i ring that book up for you that you just put in your shopping bag?" and some might go so far as to just boldly reach into the bag and pul out the book before the guy answers. About half the time the person will say yes or will act dumb and pull it out or something. If you say, "Hey, thief, what are you doing putting that book in your bag?" you will get resistance and denial 100% of the time. A really good employee will act dumb and act like they are not dealing with a theft but instead just an oversight on the part of the thief who unintentionally put the item in a briefcase. "Oh, sir, I'm sorry but you can't put that in your briefcase. Here, let me put it on the table for you." then proceed in a friendly manner to open the briefcase and pull out the stolen property. If they open the briefcase and find no stolen property, they can still say "Ooops! Sorry about that," smile and walk away hoping this guy isn't an attorney. Once you get your recovery and your proof that you didn't make a mistake the approach should change to a more forceful one. "Sir, please come up to the desk with me so we can go over the rules one more time." Once at the desk, the supervisor should be called and a decision made on how to proceed. This is the most critical point because it leaves an employee, untrained in security, standing with a thief who may have other property of yours in his possession while you wait an awkwardly long time for security help to come. You just have to do your best or you have to know in advance what your library policy will support. In retail, clerks in this situation know in advance that the store policy is either to get the guy out of the building or hold him for police. If it is to hold him for police, the words "You are under arrest" never are uttered. They are friendly as long as they can be, and when the guy decides to leave, a decision made to physically hold him or not. But they know in advance what they will do in every instances unless the supervisor over rules the policy and makes a change based on circumstances. The thieft is told he is being detailed for security. If he says, am I under arrest, the answer is no, although, in fact, he is, if he is not free to go. If he says, am I free to go?, the answer is no, not until we ascertain whether there is anything else in that briefcase. Be aware, however, if he gets belligerant, under most state laws, you may not be able to charge and prosecute him on the first theft since he never took it out of the building. You may have to prove that he intended to steal it and would have had you not intervened. Since laws vary in 50 states and other countries, I suggest you consult your attorney and set a policy on what you want to do, i.e., if you would rather not prosecute because you'd have your entire staff in court all week long every day due to the volume of incidents, then know this in advance. Whether you call police, campus police, etc. depends upon your specific circumstances and your will to prosecute. It may also depend upon whether you think he has more of your stuff under his coat and needs to be searched or whether you think you got it all. And it may also depend upon whether you think that you have identified him accurately or not. (Did he show a driver's license when he signed in? Do you know enough about him to be able to effectively ban him in the future?). Finally, how you handle this may depend on whether he is one of your students, a visiting faculty member, general public, etc.
Steve Keller, CPP
Security Consultant
Daily Telegraph London
Museum permits Greeks to inspect Elgin Marbles
By Marie Woolf, Political Correspondent
GREEK scientists are to be given unprecedented access to the Elgin Marbles to investigate whether they have been damaged while in British hands.
The move comes as MPs prepare to investigate art works which are claimed to have been dubiously acquired by British museums. The Commons select committee on culture, media and sport is likely to raise the question of the return of the Elgin Marbles, which the British Museum acquired in 1816.
This week the controversy will be fuelled when senior Greek chemists will examine the sculptures to see if the British Museum damaged them during cleaning in 1939. The Greek team is to investigate a claim by the historian William St Clair that the British Museum tried to cover up damage caused by scraping the marbles. Greece's investigating team, which will see the Parthenon Sculptures on Thursday, will be led by Theodore Skoulikidis, professor of chemical engineering at the National Technical Museum of Athens. His report will be presented next month at a conference at the British Museum, attended by British, Greek, American and Italian scientists. Dr Victoria Solomonidis, of the Greek embassy, said: "He is Greece's foremost expert on the use of cleaning materials on sculptures. It is obvious to the naked eye there is a difference between the front, which has been cleaned, and the back, which has not been touched. The horse's head was completely and utterly decorated and now it is beige. This is not a favour to us. It is a minimum." The Greek government wants Britain to return the Parthenon sculptures "as a gesture of goodwill" before 2004, when Athens will open a new Acropolis museum. It says claims that Britain is "safeguarding" the marbles, which were damaged in 1687 during the war with the Turks, are spurious. "The only way we could lay to rest this alleged cover-up was to allow Greek archaeologists and scientists to spend a few days examining the sculptures," said a British Museum spokesman. Ronnie Fearn, Lib-Dem MP for Southport, who is a member of the House of Commons culture select committee, said last night: "This move has to be welcomed. It will clear up a story which has been hanging around for far too long."
Exhibit Was Heavily Financed by Those With Much to Gain
By DAVID BARSTOW
(New York Times; read full story at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/103199brooklyn-museum.html)
abbreviated:
NEW YORK -- Far more than has been previously disclosed, the "Sensation" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art has been financed by companies and individuals with a direct commercial interest in the works of the young British artists in the show, according to court documents and interviews with people involved in the exhibition. Faced with rising costs and the unwillingness of major corporations to support the show -- whose works have provoked furious protests in London and more recently in New York -- Arnold L. Lehman, the museum's director, embarked this summer on an aggressive campaign to finance "Sensation" by other means.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM'S CONTROVERSIAL ART EXHIBIT
Recent Coverage
In Miami, Earlier Parallel to Brooklyn Museum Controversy (Oct. 23, 1999) British Artists Have Been Taking Risks, and Flak, for Years (Oct. 14, 1999) Art Museum Trustees Say City Hall Pushed Them Too Hard (Oct. 10, 1999) Arguments Heard in Museum's Legal Battle With Mayor (Oct. 9, 1999) Museum Says Mayor Knew Nature of Exhibit 2 Months Ago and Didn't Object (Oct. 5, 1999) Critic's Notebook: Of Dung and Its Many Meanings in the Art World (Oct. 5, 1999) A Scientist Rallies Allies for Besieged Art Museum (Oct. 4, 1999) Judge in Museum Case Has Eye for Law, if Not Art (Oct. 4, 1999) Giuliani Deputies Accuse Museum of Conspiracy to Inflate Art Value in Show (Sept. 30, 1999) Museum Fight Pits Free Expression Against Control of Public Spending (Sept. 30, 1999) Column --The Big City: Open Market for Artifacts Aids All Sides (Sept. 30, 1999) Brooklyn Museum Sues to Keep Mayor From Freezing Its Funds (Sept. 29, 1999) Critic's Notebook: Defenders of the First Amendment Are Late to Battlefield Chris Ofili: British Artist Holds Fast to His Inspiration (Sept. 28, 1999) Giuliani Threatens to Evict Museum Over Art Exhibit (Sept. 24, 1999) Critic's Notebook: Cutting Through Cynicism in Art Furor (Sept. 24, 1999) Giuliani Vows to Cut Subsidy Over Art He Calls Offensive (Sept. 23, 1999) Slide Show
He and his assistants raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from those who stood to profit most from the exhibition of contemporary art, a practice that other museum executives say was practically unheard of and ethically problematic. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said as much when he began a legal campaign to close the show, accusing museum officials not only of recklessly staging an exhibition of vulgar and sacrilegious art, but also of conspiring with the owner of the "Sensation" collection, Charles Saatchi, to inflate the value of the works on display. Giuliani's lawyers have dropped the conspiracy issue, but the financial arrangements behind the "Sensation" exhibition, which have surfaced in the court battle between the museum and the mayor, are highly unusual. Lehman and his assistants solicited donations of at least $10,000 from dealers who represented many of the artists whose works are on display. They offered Christie's special access to the museum to entertain clients in the market for contemporary art. They secured a pledge of $160,000 from Saatchi and then they attempted to conceal his financial support from the public. In an interview on Thursday, Lehman insisted that commercial considerations had never entered his discussions with those who donated money to the exhibition, which he estimated would cost the museum $2 million. He said those who agreed to give money were motivated by their enthusiasm for an important body of art, not by any desire for profit. In any event, Lehman asserted, the exhibition has not increased the market value of any works by the "Sensation" artists.
(+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
David Bowie, the popular rock musician, pledged a personal donation of about $75,000 and agreed to provide the voice-over for the exhibit audio tour without charge. Soon after, his private, for-profit Internet company was given the right to display the "Sensation" exhibition on Bowie's personal Web site, -www.davidbowie.com, which sells art, clothing and memberships to Bowie's fan club. While Bowie's financial contribution has been kept in confidence by museum officials, traffic on the Bowie Web site has more than tripled. Larry Gagosian, a prominent contemporary art dealer in New York City who is a friend of Saatchi's and who also represents several of the artists in "Sensation," said he had paid $10,000 for tickets to a "Sensation" fund-raising dinner. Museum officials solicited contributions from other major contemporary art dealers. In a letter to an associate, Lehman wrote that the dealers' contributions were in "their own best interests." And while it has been known for months that Christie's contributed $50,000 toward the exhibition, the documents reveal for the first time the extent to which Christie's was allowed to use its sponsorship to promote sales in its coming auction of contemporary art. The auction will include works by some of the "Sensation" artists, and for its donation Christie's was given, among other benefits, "unlimited opportunities to entertain in the museum during the run of the exhibition with the $5,000 rental fee to be waived," according to an internal Christie's memorandum.
(+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
"Saatchi is clear that if he wanted to collect cash instead of art, he would have spent 30 years buying Picasso and Matisse -- infinitely more prestigious, a safer and much more profitable investment," Jenny L. Blyth, curator of the Saatchi Gallery in London, said in a written statement on Friday.
(+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
Andree B. Corroon, a spokeswoman for Christie's, said the company's $50,000 donation had nothing to do with increasing Christie's profits. "Our sponsorship was in support of the Brooklyn Museum of Art," she said. "They contacted us." And Edward Dolman, Christie's managing director in New York, said in court papers that the $50,000 was not a lot of money compared with Christie's donations to other museums. But according to an internal Christie's memorandum, the $50,000 "represents Christie's most significant financial commitment to an external exhibition to date."
(++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
(New York Times; read full story at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/103199brooklyn-museum.html)
Florentine treasure found in market is sold abroad
BY DALYA ALBERGE
ARTS CORRESPONDENT (Times of London)
AN extraordinary Renaissance sculpture bought for UKP.50 in Portobello Road market, West London, in a cardboard box packed with an iron kettle and other bric-a-brac, has left Britain because no museum could raise the UKP.2 million to purchase it. The 1478 terracotta 12in sculpture is the work of Andrea del Verrocchio, the sculptor and painter to whom Leonardo da Vinci was apprenticed. It was his model for the Executioner of St John the Baptist on the magnificent Silver Altar in the Baptistry in Florence. Its modelling reveals the finest technical virtuosity - the master's talents pushed to their limits. It even bears his finger and thumb marks. Timothy Clifford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland, said he was "deeply saddened" at the loss to the nation, saying he desperately wanted to buy it but the price was beyond his organisation's reach. On the advice of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, the Arts Minister, Alan Howarth, placed a temporary stop on its export in May, allowing three months for a public institution to match the sale price - "a last chance", he said, "to keep the sculpture in the United Kingdom". The terracotta's recent history is mysterious. It is believed to have been spotted in the market by the late Anthony Roth, an art historian and dealer in sculpture. He was convinced it was the work of Verrocchio (circa 1435-88), who succeeded Donatello as the favourite sculptor at the Medici court and whose equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice is among his relatively few masterpieces to have survived. The catalogue to the National Gallery's current exhibition on Renaissance Florence, which includes terracotta angels from his workshop, notes that Verrocchio's expertise extended across silver, bronze, marble, terracotta, stucco, wood, tempera and oil. Mr Roth is said to have taken the statue to a leading auction house in London, which dismissed it as a Victorian object of little value. He then tried the Victoria & Albert Museum where its two sculpture specialists at that time - Anthony Radcliffe and John Larson - echoed his excitement. A thermo-luminescence test proved its age. Mr Larson, now head of sculpture and inorganic conservation at the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, said that the moment he saw it he had little doubt that it was Verrocchio's figure: "It was so good." Paul Williamson, chief curator of sculpture at the V&A, noted that there are significant differences between the terracotta and the silver figure: "The figure is unclothed and holds a bunch of cloth rather than a sword, which strongly suggest that the terracotta was modelled from life in the workshop." He added that it dated from a time when Verrocchio had reached the apogee of his fame and in it he had produced a tour de force of compositional and technical virtuosity. Both Dr Radcliffe, who published the discovery in 1992, and Dr Williamson expressed regret that neither the National Galleries of Scotland nor the V&A could acquire such a rare piece by one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance.
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How about this sculpture's provenance? The dealer at Portobello Road must know how he acquired it... I do not believe in fairy tales anymore. The lack of substantial proof that this statue was stolen and/or illicitly exported does not mean it was not stolen and/or illicitly exported. The trade in art works of this importance without any provenance should be prevented.
Ton Cremers
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